I'm back in Toronto with a couple of essays to read and a short paper to write for the weekly Tragedy onslaught. Hopefully I'll be able to get my computer back online today.

Jeff Healey just died, which is really too bad, because he was hands down one of the greatest guitarists of all time. I thought he would have been a bit older than 41. That means he was only a fresh faced lad of 22 when he appeared in Road House.

I added Zelda from Offbeat Cinema to my myspace friends list, and she responded back with a comment about my profile, giving me a small thrill. I spent most of yesterday reading Othello, plus a bunch of essays on famous artistic couples to get a feel for biographical approaches to subjects. Another weekend in Peterborough comes and goes.

I spent the entire bus ride (with two seats to myself) to Peterborough reading The Gum Thief over again, since it's been awhile since I last picked it up. Coupland's writing style is still among my favorites. His latest book admires the idea that people deserve a second look before they can be considered understood or even really seen in the first place. We all remain so relatively invisible to one another, lumped into categories based on our appearances and social positions. Meanwhile there's so much going on inside everyone. It's a fascinating contradiction.

I just emailed him, asking for an interview. I'm already nervous as shit. In any event I have to go with the flow of what comes of it, if for nothing else than for the sake of my mark in Biography.

It snowed heavily in Peterborough. I have a hankering to check out Chumleigh's. We'll see if I can slog my way down there. I do have a fair amount to read this weekend, including work by Coetzee, and a Shakespeare play I had to rescue from the boxes of stuff in my parents' basement. Every time I visit my dad announces his plans for spring cleaning. There are decades worth of junk in this place that would make a nice addition to someone else's junk pile.

Last night my folks and I watched Judgement at Nuremberg with Spencer Tracy and a slew of other stars. Really well directed and didn't drag at all in its three-hour length. There's a fascinating scene in which Marlene Dietrich and Tracy are walking through the streets of Nuremberg and a band of men are singing "Lily Marleen," a song that Dietrich made popular. She lightly sings a couple of bars herself but otherwise translates its meaning into something Tracy can understand. It's a wonderfully scripted scene.

It does my heart good that Offbeat Cinema is still on television. It being so close to the holiday, they're running Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Really campy stuff, to say the least.

I haven't been feeling that great over the last couple of days. I'm usually a real Christmas Spirit kind of guy. It's a combination of a few things that have been weighing on me or getting on my nerves. Hopefully I'll be able to snap out of it. A little Jimmy Stewart action should cure what ails me.

I went to Lansdowne Place to finish my Christmas shopping and picked up a nice jewelry box for my mom. The Music World in the mall is going out of business, which is kind of sad because I bought quite a lot of records there when I was younger and have a few memories of hanging out in the store. I also very briefly dated a girl whose mother and stepfather owned the place. They're having a huge sale before they close the doors. Most of the stuff had been picked over but I was able to pick up the complete series of Twitch City for $15.

I watched White Christmas for the first time, which kind of underwhelmed me, but that may be attributed to the aforementioned mood. I dug the performances and the musical routines but it's barely a Christmas movie and the plot is paper-thin. Not Curtiz' best by a mile.

Another eventful day. I did manage to leave the house on a couple of occasions, to pick up Sarah's present (some plum-related Body Shop stuff) and go glow-in-the-dark mini putting with Sarah, Mike, Holly, and Steve. The course was jungle-themed and almost totally vacant, so we took some liberties with how hard we took our shots. Afterwards, we sat for awhile in the nearby Country Style donut shop. The girl behind the counter gave us a bunch of free donuts to take home, as they were about to be tossed.

I want to pick up one more thing for my mom. She deserves something extra.

I decided not to leave the house today. Steve made a fantastic breakfast (at lunchtime) and I spent most of the day on the couch flipping channels. Tomorrow I'll finish my shopping.

I mentioned to my aunt that I was going to pick up a money belt for my trip to Europe. My mom overheard and picked one up for me while she was out shopping. I can't believe I'm leaving in a week's time.

I was sitting next to some guy on the Greyhound on the way here, and this woman behind us sneezed. The guy next to me was so surprised that he let out a tiny shriek. He actually shrieked. I've never heard a guy seriously do that before. After he did it he he rubbed his eyes and muttered "Fuck," probably wishing he could take it back.

The traffic in Peterborough was bad due to the weather and the fact that snowplows have apparently ceased to exist in Southern Ontario. My sister picked me up and drove me back to my parents' place, where I promptly settled into a groove on the couch for some quality time with cable TV. On January 8th, CBC is running a miniseries based on Coupland's jPod novel. Alan Thicke is in it. Okay. I'll have to bug Matt to watch it at his place since I haven't had cable in about half a year.

My folks put up an artificial Christmas tree, marking the end of an era. It does look nice, however. They strung it with new lights that lead less of an assault on the eye and scaled back on the tinsel and icicles. There are few more comforting places on earth than my family's living room at Christmas. The season just doesn't feel as though it's started until I can sit down in that room and soak it in.

My birthday is officially over (at 5 days it's pretty well stretched to the limit). I had dinner with the family tonight, opened some cards and presents, ate some cake and ice cream. My family always gets me gifts even when all I'm good for the rest of the year is a phonecall or email. I should change that. The gift that was going to make me "friggen crap" turned out to be a camera, and I unfortunately purchased a camera recently, so I'm returning it to Future Shop and going on a bit of a spree. Sarah and Mike gave me a copy of Douglas Coupland's The Gum Thief (I'll be reading that on the plane to Berlin). Holly gave me a copy of The Sound of Music, and Adam gave me the sixth season of Scrubs. Aunt Nancy picked me up a Starbucks card - THAT I'll use on campus, for sure.

I put on Touch of Evil after dinner and tried to explain to my folks a bit of what I'm doing at university. My mom really digs Orson Welles and said that she's had Citizen Kane in her head ever since she watched it last night. Watching old movies has become sort of a new thing for my parents and I. It's nice to be able to share a pastime with them.

I picked up a Eurail pass online with a little help from Brenda Thorne. We'll be detouring through Brussels and Amsterdam while I'm overseas. It's been a lazy weekend overall and I haven't done any readings. I'm heading back to Toronto tomorrow after I get my cough checked out by a doctor in town. After I'm back my semester is really going to shift into its last phase. The end is in sight. I have work to do.